Archive for Feb 20, 2009

Rumor at best, and this time coming from a Korean digital camera community forum: someone claimed to have received information from another person who’s working at Nikon headquarter about a new DLSR to be unveil on the opening of PMA 2009. That sounds familiar with all the second-hand stories been told before any major digital camera shows, right? Let’s get to the story. That new model oddly, dubs D5000, and inherits the rather depressing no in-body’s AF motor likes the D40 and D60, hence the Entry-Level. However, it’s slightly upscale in performance level, and is neck to neck with current D90.

Gateway's FX6800-01e was the first i7, Nehalem, Quad-Core processor PC we tested, and its performance boost over the previous Core 2 architecture was obvious. That was the company's lowest FX-series rig with Nehalem/Bloomfield; today we have the highest model in the FX-series, the FX-6800-05 desktop, to review. Gateway's ultimate gaming rig sports high end components built upon the Intel's i7-940 2.93Ghz, ATI Radeon 4870 X2 graphics, 6GB of DDR3 memory, and last but by no means least, an ultra-fast Intel X25-M 80GB SSD. All that will cost you around $3000 retail, so the big question is whether this Gateway is worth the asking price?

The long-awaited Dell Inspiron Mini 10 has finally made an appearance on the company's US website, complete with full specifications and a gallery. Confirmed are the 10.1-inch display, running at 1024 x 576 16:9 with glossy finish, a choice of Intel Atom Z520 and Z530 processors (1.33GHz and 1.6GHz respectively), 1GB of RAM and either 120GB, 160GB or 250GB of storage.

Apple has discontinued its 20-inch Cinema Display, informing distributors that, effective immediately, "all backlog will be cancelled and there is no automatic order conversion." Listings of the monitor have already been removed from Apple's own online store, and stock at third-party suppliers is already very low; the company is believed to have halted production of the 20-inch display late in 2008.

Press shots of the Motorola ZN300 have leaked, showing the Linux-based slider in all its squared-off glory. According to the limited specs we have now, the ZN300 - which also goes by the name MotoZine ZN300 - has a 3-megapixel camera, QVGA display and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

Intel's X25-M solid-state drive has generally aced all testing, with its combination of super-high read and write speeds, which is why SSD-loving geeks were so disturbed by PC Perspective's long-term performance analysis. According to their findings, Intel's file controller - which cycles through available flash cells progressively, so as to avoid wearing out regularly-accessed blocks - results in a significant slow-down of performance due to the OS being unable to keep track of fragmentation. Now Intel are denying that the PC Perspective testing - which simulated a longer life-cycle - is in fact an accurate representation of an X25-M's use.

According to Takara Tomy, their RoBo-Q is the world's smallest remote controlled walking robot. At just 1.3-inches tall I can well believe that, but I'm far more interested in Akihabara's video review (which you can see after the cut) and the DIY maze they built for the dinky robots to wander around.

Apple's record financial performance for 2008 was held up by many as a shining example of quality products blazing through the financial downturn. That celebration may have been premature, however; the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Apple's sales of computers dropped by 6-percent in January 2009, compared to the same month last year, the company's first monthly loss in three years.

We’re currently fondling the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE and soon you could be too, as Amazon US are now taking orders for the blue version of the netbook. Listed for $374, you get a 10-inch display running at 1024 x 600, 160GB hard-drive, and Intel’s newer N280 1.66GHz processor.

According to the latest reports coming out of ASUS, the company is planning to completely phase out its 8.9-inch Eee PC range in 2009. Benson Lin, president of Asustek's Asia-Pacific division, told reporters this week that the Eee PC range will continue with two size variants, 10-inches and 7-inches.

After Psion stepped into the netbook fray, not with a model of their own but a whole lot of legal talk that they own the “netbook” trademark, we’ve all been waiting to see which company will step up and contest it. Dell has obviously decided to be that challenger, filing a petition with the United States Patent and Trademark Office requesting that the Psion trademark be cancelled.

LG officially debuted their touchscreen Arena KM900 at Mobile World Congress this week, a touchscreen feature-phone with a 3-inch WVGA display, 3G HSDPA supporting up to 7.2Mbps, WiFi, A-GPS and a 5-megapixel autofocus camera with the ability to capture DVD-quality video. The LG Arena KM900 also introduces the company's new 3D S-Class User Interface - you can see it demonstrated in the video after the cut - which blends icons, task-specific controls inspired by standalone devices (e.g. the digital camera has the control wheel you might associate with a dedicated digicam; it also has manual autofocus settings) and gestures.